38of 43The Royal Villa at Chable Resort & Spa in Mexico has a large, wrap-around pool, multiple bedrooms and common areas, and as spalike bathroom.Photo: Kenny Viese

39of 43The Royal Villa at Chable Resort & Spa in Mexico has a large, wrap-around pool, multiple bedrooms and common areas, and as spalike bathroom.Photo: Kenny Viese

40of 43The Royal Villa at Chable Resort & Spa in Mexico has a large, wrap-around pool, multiple bedrooms and common areas, and as spalike bathroom.Photo: Kenny Viese

41of 43The Royal Villa at Chable Resort & Spa in Mexico has a large, wrap-around pool, multiple bedrooms and common areas, and as spalike bathroom.Photo: Kenny Viese

42of 43The Royal Villa at Chable Resort & Spa in Mexico has a large, wrap-around pool, multiple bedrooms and common areas, and as spalike bathroom.Photo: Kenny Viese

43of 43The Royal Villa at Chable Resort & Spa in Mexico has a large, wrap-around pool, multiple bedrooms and common areas, and as spalike bathroom.Photo: Kenny Viese

In the mid-'90s, my parents took their three adolescent children to Tulum, Mexico. Back then, the road south of Cancún was rough, some of it unpaved. The area involved a sleepy village with a beautiful beach strip, a few small shops and a lot of "property for sale" signs. Mayan ruins and hippy vibes were the main tourism draws.

Today, of course, Tulum is one of Mexico's trendiest destinations, with dozens of boutique hotels, yoga studios, critically acclaimed restaurants and a bustling pueblo. I returned a few years ago. It was nice, if not quite the quaint getaway I vaguely remembered.

Travel writers have been musing for a while now about "the next Tulum" - Isla Holbox? Santa Teresa, Costa Rica? - but I'm not going to join them. That said, there is plenty of rewarding vacation life beyond Riviera Maya on Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula. I discovered as much on a recent trip to Chablé, a new resort near the tiny town of Chocholá in the tropical jungle about half an hour from Mérida.

If pressed, the first thing I remember about my time at Chablé is the sound of birds. From the moment I woke up till the time I nodded off. The squawk of a grackle atop the umbrella on the patio outside my bedroom. The warble of songbirds during an early-morning yoga class on a platform overlooking the cenote around which the resort was built. As faint grace notes to a massage at the spa. Harmonizing with crickets and frogs at dusk. There really was no other noise - unless you count the quiet crunch of gravel trails as the odd bicycle or golf cart traversed its way to one of 40 private suites and villas, to the spa or to the main hacienda.

Chablé opened earlier this year on 750 acres. The 300-year-old property originally was a sisal plantation. Hacienda San Antonio Chablé, as it was once called, had been abandoned for the better part of a century before the current owner, a real estate developer from Mexico City, bought it several years ago.

Chablé still has a plantation feel, and that's by design. Original stone arches, in all their partially crumbling glory, frame entryways to the hacienda, where guests can chat with the concierge, have a cocktail at the live-oak bar or settle in with a glossy coffee-table book.

Standing in the stunning lobby space, on a vibrant tile floor amid low-lying couches and sisal-slung chairs, it was impossible not to wonder if the resort's Mexican architects, Jorge Borja and Paulina Morán, would be available to design my own old house.

The goal, general manager Rocco Bova told me, was to create a hotel that combines the original colonial architecture and elements of ancient Mayan culture in five-star environs for today's modern traveler. A lot of resorts tout the old-meet-new ethos, but here, it shines so subtly, so flawlessly, that in May Chablé received the coveted Prix Versailles award from UNESCO.

The resort has two presidential suites - entire homes, really - with three bedrooms apiece and multiple common areas. The Royal Suite is especially dreamy, with a pool that weaves around an expansive courtyard into the master bathroom.

More Information

Rates at Chablé, which includes most activities and breakfast, start at $874 per night; chableresort.com.

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I stayed in one of 38 stand-alone villas. Each comes with a hammock-clad private plunge pool. Heavy wood doors slide to open to the king bedroom and living area. The bathroom has floating mirrors, and its many windows, shielded by foliage outside, lend an al fresco feel. The wood-wrapped shower has separate indoor and outdoor options.

* * *

Each night, a schedule of activities for the following day is left on my bedside table during turn down service - what I'd already pre-booked plus other options. Each morning, I'd consult this agenda while sitting on my villa's patio by the plunge pool, sipping coffee and nibbling pastries under the grackle's watchful eye. Then I'd hop on my cruiser bicycle and pedal over to the spa, where much of the action takes place.

Chablé is part wellness retreat; the 32,000-square-foot, world-class spa's offerings are built around a cenote, those water-filled sinkholes considered sacred by the Mayans. "Shamanism meets luxury" is the resort's unlikely tagline, and the 14-room spa incorporates holistic, mystical elements via three "journeys" (Fountain of Youth, Tree of Life, Heaven and Earth). My tension-relieving herbal-compress treatment began with a chant- and-incense-filled Mayan welcoming ritual and involved a 90-minute massage using fragrant, heated-and-oiled cloth-wrapped sacks.

The 40-page spa menu also includes salon and fitness services, from guided meditation and Reiki to salsa lessons, tennis and yoga. There are hydrotherapy options, hot and cold plunge pools, an infinity pool and a flotation room. With a consultation, the more hardcore can book a traditional purification ceremony with a shaman in one of three temazcals (pre-Hispanic sweat lodge).

After a morning of treatments, yoga and Pilates, a detoxifying fresh juice drink with a side of what could be the best avocado toast on the planet in the spa's café hit the spot.

* * *

Culinary treasures await elsewhere on the property, too, all utilizing local ingredients grown in raised beds on-site. At Ki'ol, the more casual, open-air restaurant by Chablé's main pool area, Yucatánean Tikin Xic-style fish is marinated with adobo de Achiote and sour oranges.

But the real star is Ixi'im ("corn" in the Mayan language), from Jorge Vallejo of Mexico City's famed Quintonil (No. 22 on the World's Best Restaurants list). Soaring steel and glass rise from the stonework of the original 19th-century machine house to industrial-medieval effect, especially fetching at night. Inside, amber-lit glass shelves displaying rare tequilas - some 3,500 bottles, Chablé's owner is an avid collector - envelop multiple dining spaces beneath a hanging grid of thick sisal rope.

Vallejo's deputy, Luis Ronzón, oversees the kitchen day to day, and the inventive menu that spotlights regional bounty infused with molecular technique. Dinner might begin with deer tartare or a salad dressed with quintonil, cilantro, parsley, roasted tomatoes and queso sopero from Tabasco, then segue to perfectly tender baby octopus with lentils and pork sausage from Valladolid, or magret duck with a rich corn smut mole, squash blossoms and cucumber. It's destination worthy, like the property in which it lives.

Chablé also offers hands-on cooking classes with a traditional Mayan chef, during which you can learn to make fresh corn tortillas, salsa or chocolate.

* * *

Before dinner at Ixi'im on my last night, I had a drink on the hacienda's veranda with Bova, as lightning bugs began to frolic in the verdant expanse that spread out before us. A lily-pad-topped water feature burbled gently. The sunset to our right ignited one of those magnificent stone arches that would be, unfortunately, my gateway home at the crack of dawn.

"The nature here is incredible," said Bova, after I asked him, keeping in mind his many years of experience managing hotels all over the world, to explain what sets Chablé apart from other resorts in the Yucatán.

As an example, he explained that he and his family had just returned from a beach vacation near Tulum. It was nice. But he was happy to be back, ensconced in the peaceful surroundings of Chablé - and its symphony of birds, which had gone quiet as he spoke. They would be back.

"The number of birds that you get there in the morning is a joke," he laughs. "Two birds! Here, there's like, 200 birds."

Jody Schmal has worked for the Houston Chronicle since 2012. She edits the newspaper's travel, food and restaurant stories, and was the paper’s Style Editor until 2014. A Houston native, she graduated from the London College of Fashion in England, and previously worked as the Deputy Editor at Houston magazine.